From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.
Today I'll be reviewing the movie Barbarella released in 1968.
Starring:
Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, and Anita Pallenberg
Directed by:
Roger Vadim
Genre:
Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating:
PG
Budget:
$9,000,000 (estimated)
Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:
5.9
The Synopsis is:
Barbarella is an astronaut given a mission by the President of Earth to find a missing scientist by the name of Durand Durand on the 16th Planet of Tau Ceti, who has created the Positronic Ray which could cause war across the universe.
Story:
In 1962 Jean-Claude Forest came up with the character of Barbarella based on the physical attributes of Brigitte Bardot. She was to appear in a serial for a French magazine, featuring a young woman who has adventures which tend to include sexual interludes with the aliens she encounters much as James Bond does with the women in his franchise. In fact, I have heard of and thought of Barbarella being a female version of Bond in space. And I love that idea and would love to see more iterations of that.
If it was OK for James Bond to have intimate liaisons during his missions, while still being a beloved character, why not a female version of that?
Two years later Jean-Claude turned the serial into a book, becoming the first adult comic book, containing racy visuals not suitable for children.
However, the double standard was prevalent in the early 60’s where as the comic received a lot of controversy and interest.
Dino De Laurentiis bought the rights in order to make a film for Barbarella and hired director Roger Vadim to to make it happen.
As a fan of science fiction, Roger Vadim seemed to be excited about the film, saying in an interview before the film production that he took it as his opportunity to "depict a new futuristic morality”. And his quote is something to really keep in mind when assessing the film.
Terry Southern got the writing credit for the film, however, there were many more writers such as Claude Brulé, Vittorio Bonicelli, Clement Biddle Wood, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, Charles B. Griffith and Roger Vadim as well. Charles B. Griffith noted the production "hired fourteen other writers" and each one seemed to have some scenes or features that contributed to the film though many of them were uncredited.
The entire story from the comic book was changed for the film and a few elements remained but suffered some modification. Barbarella was an outlaw and very competent during her adventures. Durand Durand was just simply called Duran, had one eye and helped Barbarella. The Black Queen wore an eye patch pretty much all of the time.
The story origin from the comics were brilliant, but somehow the film lost track of where it was headed by the end. It may have had too many ideas to make a cohesive narrative.
One other really prominent feature of the film was the tone. It is light and very cheeky filled with more comedy aspects that had fun with the idea of the fantasy.
The irony that a man who had a fury costume was equally fury without it.
Professor Ping’s behavior, the awkwardness of Dildano and the rebel forces, their password "Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch" (which is the name of a real village in Wales, UK), the way Barbarella smirks from time to time and her reactions to things, the opening and closing music, and so many more hilarious moments and sound effects that were completely intentional playing up the ridiculousness of it all.
That could be a drawback for many viewers but I personally enjoyed that infusion in this film.
Pacing:
At 1 hour and 38 minutes, it is pretty fast moving. Barbarella's adventures are never boring... weird, but never boring. However, the ending seemed to be missing something to feel complete.
Challenge:
At first you think that the biggest challenge in the story is going to be the Black Queen or the Great Tyrant as she is often referred to, but she is the lesser of the many evils presented in the film.
Besides being visually fascinating she leads a privileged life in the city of SoGo doing whatever suits her fancy. In the film, she happens to fancy Barbarella and the winged man that helps her, Pygar.
The city of SoGo is built on a lake that is called the Matmos, which is a living energy of evil. It feeds off evil and it also inspires people to be evil as well. The Black Queen tells Barbarella in one scene that the Matmos’ fumes does something to people. “It makes one want to play.”
The city inhabitants are a perfect example of this as they revel in crime and hedonism at the expense of others at every opportunity without repercussion. The very name of the city is short for the Biblical cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Any one or thing that is good is cast into the Labyrinth to live off orchids and roam aimlessly.
When the brilliant scientist Durand Durand landed on the planet, he was taken to SoGo. His Positronic Ray was locked away and only the Great Tyrant has access to it.
Under the guise of the city’s concierge, he has a plan to eventually gain power of SoGo so he can retrieve his Positronic Ray and become emperor of the universe. It may have been possible that his intentions were less diabolical in the beginning, but it seems he may have had an encounter with the Matmos that aged him 30 years. This helps him to go unrecognized by everyone.
I especially loved this character for his charisma on screen.
Empathy:
Barbarella is given her mission and crash lands on the "16th Planet of Tau Ceti" where she is pretty much a fish out of water depending on the kindness of strangers to get her toward her goal.
You don’t get to know much about Barbarella except that she is an “astronomic-gatrix” and the only person that the President of Earth can leave the mission to since the universe has been pacified for centuries. The society she comes from is so modern and advanced they no longer engage in war and physical contact with one another. On the other hand, everyone loves each other and nudity is not a big deal.
In the beginning of the film, she is rescued by a catchment Mark Hand, who asks for physical pleasure with Barbarella as repayment. She enjoys it and it is a running theme of the film.
Someone saves Barbarella and she repays them in the same way. You get the feeling that she is using the excuse of repayment from the first time onward just to have sex again. She’s discovering her sexuality for the first time.
Another such lover and helper is Pygar, the last of the bird-men species "Ornithanthropes". Even after establishing that he is not an actual heavenly angel, the film continues to refer to him as an angel even up until the end.
The leader of the rebel forces in SoGo, Dildano is her last lover, but he insists on having intimate relations the way it is done on Earth to Barbarella’s dismay. And there is when we discover how boring, cold and sterile the process is. It’s reminiscent of the modern way of making love in the movie The Demolition Man released in 19938
Through all of her adventures, Barbarella doesn’t let here physical relationships affect her psychologically. Her mission takes first place.
Technical:
The technical aspects is where the film shines for being a B film. The absolutely stunning zero gravity opening credit sequence was quite ingeniously achieved by having the actress move around on Plexiglas with a picture of the spaceship underneath it and filmed from above.
I love the design of Barbarella ship which acts a lot like a living organism as it has what looks like breathing bubbles and it’s own artificial intelligence.
The ship’s door also opens like a camera shutter.
Inside Barbarella's spaceship, it’s completely outfitted in shag carpeting top to bottom, a changing room, a communication statue, an organ control panel, and a famous painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - 1884" by pointillist painter Georges Seurat.
The most memorable part of the film for many people are the many exotic costumes that Barbarella wears throughout the film. She has seven costume changes and they are all imaginatively magnificent, inspiring fashion designers, pop stars, and cosplayers for decades.
Its visually imaginative artistic an captivating and wonderfully dazzling with color and creativity. Wild imaginative sets. Some of the scapes are just breathtaking for what they were able to manufacture in the studio. It’s all done in a studio, it looks like it, but it’s pretty incredible and the use of color is incredibly spectacular.
The film was stuffed to the gills with interesting visual details like blue rabbits in the background, people hanging from the ceiling, flesh eating terror dolls, children on leashes, death by parakeet, tube travelling, and people swimming in tubs as their essence is being smoked at a lounge to just name a few.
There were some unusual foley such as screams that sound like seagulls, whips that sound like high pitched screams.
The score was a very 60’s inspired psychedelic sound by composer-producers Bob Crewe and Charles Fox. The main songs are the opening title song, “Barbarella” and “Drag Me Down” performed by The Glitterhouse as well as “An Angel is Love” performed by Bob Crewe.
Performances:
The performances are a mixed bag for me. There were actors who were intentionally not made to act with realism. Jane Fonda plays Barbarella with a lot of innocence and charm, but there is also a sense of whimsy and folly. The character is not very good at being an agent, which makes sense she is an astronaut, but Jane plays her with a bit of smarts. You can see her eyes thinking along with a series of micro-expressions that make her performance so unique to the role.
She is so incredible as Barbarella that I can’t really imagine anyone else playing the part. She is an excellent actress, however, I feel of her body of work, Barbarella, is her most iconic.
Anita Pallenberg's who was a fashion model and became a muse for the Rolling Stones did the physical performance for the Black Queen. I thought she was such an impressive character played with wicked grace. Her costumes were fantastic and her character’s voice was dubbed by Joan Greenwood.
Milo O'Shea was exceptionally excellent playing Durand-Durand. He really ramped his performance up by the end featuring the more complex maniacal emotions. It’s over the top and I love it.
It was great to see David Hemmings in this really inserting his quirky charm to the mix.
Best:
I loved the costumes, they really stick out in my mind, there was a lot of attention to make sure that every single character in the film looked avante garde and unusual.
The sets and props looked so strange and otherworldly. I just loved all of that stuff.
It's really quite commonplace today but I thought it was cool to see a female adventurer. And though it's a little sexploitation like, it still conveyed her as a hero and I liked that a lot.
The Ending:
The ending is probably the weakest aspect of the film. Near the end you think that you will get to actually see Dildano and the rebels win their battle against the powers that be as Barbarella completes her mission.
It leaves you a little disappointed because the film wraps up fast as the planet is nearly all destroyed by the Matmos.
But it’s then that you really get the sense that the movie wants you to notice that Barbarella and Pygar are both innocent in nature and that protects them from evil when the Mathmos spat them out. Innocence is the ultimate reason our hero survives.
Wish List:
This is just more of a question. If the detector goes off whenever Durand Durand is around, why didn’t it go off when Barbarella met him for the first time and the many other times he bumped into her? I wish that was not a glaring issue.
Another thing, I really wish is that the film portrayed Barbarella as a competent agent. She fails at her mission to retrieve Durand Durand to Earth. Essentially, the Positronic Ray is destroyed by the Great Tyrant when she released the Mathmos.
Barbarella tells Durand Durand that she had the key to the Great Tyrant’s bed chamber that set off the destruction of the entire planet and the death of several characters. She’s an awful agent and I always wanted her to be the one to figure out how to save the planet and capture the bad guy.
I feel this is why the character gets a bad wrap. She should have been an effective and definitive hero of her time.
I also wish that the voice dubbing was less obvious. It’s probably the most distracting thing about the film. I’ve heard the voices for Anita Pallenberg and Marcel Marceau and it would have been fine to use them. Everyone else does the voice over for their own characters, but it doesn’t always match up to the way they are saying things… I think it’s really evident with Pygar, played excellently by John Phillip Law.
And lastly, even though I enjoyed the heavy cheese in this film as well as the awkward comedy, I wish the film had a little more tension and a more cohesive story.
Enjoyment:
The original film was released in 1968 with a great deal of criticism. Later, the film was given major theatrical re-release in 1977 due to the box-office success of Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). The picture was edited to obtain an American "PG" rating and had the added subtitle "Queen Of The Galaxy".
The film was pretty wacky for it’s time but more timely for the late 70’s and 80’s where it grew a stronger cult viewership. Late night or Saturday evening movie airings helped it along as well.
The 1977 version was what I saw as a little girl in the movie theaters and LOVED every minute of it! It’s one of the films that sparked my lifelong love of sci-fi and especially retro sci-fi or lo-fi sci-fi where you could take everyday items and turn them into a science fiction prop.
If you only like science fiction if its pristine and realistic, this film is going to be something you will roll your eyes at because it is a complete fantasy, none of the situations are plausible in the slightest with ridiculous antics and oddities that I am totally into. It’s like a psychedelic graphic novel come to life on screen.
I heard some rumors that the film was in consideration for being re-made. And to that I wonder if it would attract the attention of a broad audience because Barbarella, by nature of the material, never did. It was always a cult phenomenon. Those of us who love the movie can't seem to shut up about it. Not to mention, many people might not understand how a promiscuous female astronaut could be embraced to the point of eradicating the double standards between the expectations of men and women. (James Bond, I’m looking at you!)
There is something special about this movie that is unforgettable, besides the visuals, but the fun free spirit of Barbarella. She may not be the ideal role model, but for 1968, she was a start in the right direction for female sci-fi heroes in cinema.
My Rating:
7.9
That sums up my review. I hope you liked it. This is Retro Nerd Girl signing off! Take care movie lovers! I'm off to the next review!
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